slow macbook

[stoveguy]

2008 black mac. has 1 dead memory slot. no warranty. originally had 2 sticks of 512 memory. now we have 1 stick of 1gb memory. college student says it is super slow. waking from sleep mode, takes 5 minutes to go online. its not my computer so i cannot verify that it is slow. she says it barely runs. is there any software functions that can be done to speed it up so its close to original performance? i am old school pc. i say reload software/os? does that even help on a mac? people complain on this site that mac is slow? what does the exactly mean? a hardware issue or something else?

 

[jchase2057]

a fresh install is a good place to start. especially if it's never been reinstalled.

 

[stoveguy]

we replaced the oem 120gb drive about 1 year ago. am using it as external drive. nothing much on it now. could put it back in mac and reload os. see how it works.